Posts

Past the sandy beaches and rocky shores, beneath the lapping of breaking waves, coasts around the world are (were) carpeted with green underwater meadows of seagrasses. Contrary to what you may be thinking, seagrasses are not a form of seaweed or even vaguely related, though they do often co-occur. Seagrasses are in fact angiosperms, flowering plants whose ancestors adapted to life in salt water back when dinosaurs roamed on land. Is anybody else picturing an plesiosaur gliding over a bed of seagrass? The ancestors of seagrasses took many biochemical and physical shifts in order to adapt to a wet and salty lifestyle. However, amazingly, an important feature that seagrasses have retained despite millions of years of evolution under the sea is their ability to flower.

PhD student studying the ecological genetics of Caribbean seagrass at Manchester Metropolitan University. Following graduating with a first class BSc(Hons) in Zoology from the University of Manchester, I worked as a research technician for over two years. I am broadly interested in tropical biology, ecology, biogeography, and palaeobiology.

About the blog

This blog contains snippets from my year living in the Ecuadorian Amazona, including camera-trapping mammals, climbing trees, and counting critters in bromeliads; as well as notes on evolution, conservation, and any other biological topic that sparks my interest. I mostly aim to make these topics accessible to general audiences, so the non-science-enthusiast can find them as interesting as I do!